SMU Associate Professor of Information Systems Ding Xuhua predicts that the battle between data security experts and hackers will increasingly shift to mobile devices in the era of smartphones and tablets. He thinks that a lot more can be done to arm ourselves against modern day cyber-attacks, and envisions a redesign of the current system. An ideal security system must not only be secure and efficient, Associate Prof Ding says, but also compatible with existing infrastructure and amenable to rolling out on a large scale. This also helps to make the system more palatable to users, who almost always see security as a troublesome cost that does not add tangibly to their profit margins. He and his team are working towards this “security foothold” using a combination of tools in systems security, which aims to protect data storage infrastructure; and cryptography, which makes use of mathematical algorithms to protect the data itself. A novel feature of Associate Prof Ding’s security system is a scheme that will keep passwords invisible to the browser and the computer’s operating system, while still allowing the user to access the website. This prevents private information from being leaked to malware that may be lurking on a compromised computer.